A post twelve+ months in the making!
Yes, you read that right. In 2017 I had some hand made items finished well before December, which was good because some health issues sidelined me for most of the month. I decided it might be fun to try to finish a gift a month in advance of Christmas 2018.
I like making things, but I want the recipients to appreciate them so I don't usually do hand made gifts. Except I learned years ago that adding a gift card or some folding currency makes any hand made gift appropriate for teenagers.
In 2017 I made a bunch of triangular zip bags and gave them out to lots of people. I had so much fun making them that I didn't really care whether the recipients would appreciate them or not, lol.
JANUARY
In fact they were so much fun that I wanted to make more. I ordered some fabric with tiny books on it from Spoonflower. I love Spoonflower but was not happy with this fabric, which was much duller and more blurry than the online photo. This is the first time I have been disappointed by Spoonflower and it's too bad because custom printed fabric is NOT CHEAP. So I used it anyhow to make triangular zip bags for my book club buddies for Christmas. I bought some tiny book charms and attached them to the zippers.
Just look at that adorable zipper pull!
QSAB = Queen Street And Beyond, the name of the book club.
FEBRUARY
During Christmas of 2017 I watched Jenn's eyes light up when I gave Emily a dozen crocheted dishcloths. I interpreted this as awe and amazement at the wonderfulness of crocheted dishcloths. I hope it wasn't amazement at the ridiculousness of giving dishcloths as a Christmas present. In any case I crocheted a dozen for Jenn. And she was very pleased with them,
Everyone who has received these tells me that they are the best dishcloths in the whole world and I agree. I've seen lots of online tutes for much fancier ones and I have tried some of them but these are the easiest and best. And I came up with the "pattern" all by myself. Here it is:
Buy a cone of cotton yarn because you are going to make a ton of these. I have made them in white, in colors, and with variegated yarn. I wash them in the bleach load and the colors will fade. Just avoid anything containing the color red, which bleeds. Ask my formerly pristine white bathrobe how I know.
With a size H crochet hook, chain 25.
Switch to a size G crochet hook. Chain 2 more, then insert into chain #24 and single crochet across the row.
Single crochet as many rows as it takes to make the dishcloth square. I've never counted them and you don't need to either. Tie off.
Why start with an H and then drop down to a G? Because it prevents the bottom row from being too tight and drawing up. This may just be my lack of skill, and your mileage may vary.
MARCH
I came up with another design for little bags that is almost identical to the millions of online tutorials for lined flat cosmetic bags with one crucial difference: I don't put the zip at the top of the bag. I fold it so the zip is about a half an inch down one side. I have never liked the way the zips look when they are at the top. There is undoubtedly a solution and maybe next year I will take the time to discover it.
I had a long roll of leftover string piecing on a foundation strip and I used that for some the bags. This gave me a chance to check out more of the decorative stitches on my new-to-me Pfaff 7510. Decorative stitching is one of my favorite things, and I'm always glad to find an excuse to use it on something.
I also added rick rack. One of the foundational principles of DragonPoodle Studio is that everything is improved by adding rick rack.
Most but not all of my gift recipients are female. I canvassed Hugh to see if a man would like a small zip bag and what he might use it for. He couldn't think of anything but he took one of the prototypes home readily enough! (book fabric, no rick rack) So I made a some with gear-themed fabric for a couple of adult guys and a snazzy one for a young boy.
And I had a tiny scrap of cave-art-horses fabric that I used for me, the daughters and one more person. One of the greatest thrills of my life happened when I was in Houston with my cousins for a memorial service. We went to the art museum only to discover an exhibit of reproductions of parts of the caves of Lascaux. Perfect.
All in all I made a lot of them.
APRIL
I spent April having a hip replacement and spending a couple of weeks in rehab recovering from the surgery. Just as I did with my knee replacements 2 years ago (and yes, I DO assume that all my joints will have to be replaced eventually) I brought a Featherweight and a project to work on while I was in rehab.
One of the nurses said "I have been a nurse a long time and I have never seen anyone bring a sewing machine with them before." What can I say, I have been a ground-breaker all my life.
The Featherweight was a GREAT conversation starter but I confess that sitting was uncomfortable and I could only work for 15 minutes at a time. I also quickly discovered that devices that heat up are NOT considered acceptable at Chatham Hospital. They nixed my heating pad for my bad shoulder* (like I said ALL the joints are toast) so I didn't even bother to ask about the iron. I pieced a bunch of stuff and then brought them home to iron.
*they did provide a heating pad alternative that bubbled hot water through it. It never got hot enough for me but it did make a nice white noise sound for attempts at sleeping, and I could leave it on all night, unlike a heating pad.
Didn't finish any crafty gifts in April and never expected to.
MAY
The recovery-from-major-surgery fun continued into May and consumed most of it. But right at the end of May Becky expressed approval and admiration for an insulated tote bag I made last year. So I made one for her.
On the insulated bags I made for myself I used Insulbrite. But on this bag I merely slip covered an insulated bag from Walmart, and replaced the straps. It was surplus to requirements once I had made the other bags, so this was a good way to recycle it into something much cuter.
The central panel fabric came from Ikea several years ago. I bought it to make an apron but didn't buy enough for that purpose. It's brighter than the photo above. Bright colors make me happy.
JUNE
I'm going to cheat on this one because I don't remember making anything in June. But in June I showed off my sewing machine totes at the NC TOGA (vintage sewing machine gathering and swap meet).
And Barbara liked them. Honestly everybody liked them but not everybody is on my Christmas list.
I had made several and when I saw Barbara's reaction I decided to give her one for Christmas.
JULY
I had an unexpected financial windfall in July. I considered doing something responsible with it. Instead I bought a Babylock Evolution, serger plus coverstitch. I absolutely love it and I haven't forgotten that I have promised the thousands of people who requested it a review (well, OK, two or three people). But that will be later.
The first project I tried has been about a decade in the planning stages. I've been buying 100% cashmere sweaters at thrift stores during that decade. Don't make the mistake of thinking of me as a hoarder. Hoarders never give up the stuff in their hoard. I am an accumulator, and after accumulating for a decade or two I am perfectly willing to use it all up.
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| blanket for Megan's baby |
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| and another baby blanket |
I laid them out on my large worktable to get the colors placed harmoniously and then started flatlock seaming them together on the amazing Babylock Evolution. I had never tried flatlocking before. It's a loose-ish stitch and when you gently pull on the seam one side slides underneath the other. So instead of a bulky seam on the back there is a flatter seam. Two layers of cashmere won't be all that flat, but it looks nice and worked well.
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| and a TV watching blanket for myself |
Cashmere sweaters come in different weights, from tissue paper thin to much thicker. It works best to stay close to the same thickness in each blanket. It also helped to stick with flat knitted pieces. I had a couple of cable knit sweaters but they stretched too much while serging them. And those tissue paper thin sweaters really weren't that great so I ditched them too.
AUGUST
Another project decades in the making: a family cook book. Once the daughters grew up and moved away they called on me from time to time for those trusty recipes and I enjoyed this. I started typing up the recipes slowly. VERY slowly. And finally I thought I was almost finished. Then I mentioned that there are a lot of stories that go with the recipes and they requested the stories also. So I worked on that at the same snail-like pace for the next few years.
This is self-published, meaning that I printed out 12 copies of all of the recipes, 3-hole punched them and put them in binders with dividers. This took an unbelievable amount of time. I've listed this under August because that's when I did the bulk of the printing and punching but it stretched out before and after this.
SEPTEMBER
Last year at Christmas I gave Jim half a dozen crocheted washcloths (identical to the dishcloths) worked up in a camouflage variegated cotton yarn. Emily told me he loves them but wanted to know if I could sew two of them together because he would like them bigger. So I bought another cone of a similar color pattern and made more. A one-pound cone made seven double-width washcloths.
OCTOBER
Finished up the cookbooks, which was a huge project made huge-r by several bad decisions about how to create it. Not sewing related and not discussed here! (But the cookbooks were a big hit).
NOVEMBER
My young friend Anna fell in love with this fabric. It's a heavy silk brocade. She wanted some to take home with her but I nixed that. Silk is slippery and difficult to work with and she is a beginning sewing person. I didn't want her to start out with a frustrating experience. So I told her I would make her a skirt.
The photo could be better. It is the same color and shiny-ness all the way from top to bottom.
I bought the bolt at a thrift store. 23 yards for $10. This is why I haunt the thrift stores. The quality of this fabric is AMAZING.
Two things that contribute to my happiness and mental health: great music* and fantastic textiles.
*at this very moment I am listening to Alan Doyle, formerly of the band Great Big Sea. Love both Alan and Great Big Sea. If you want to be happy, check them out.
DECEMBER
The original plan was for making one gift a month and easing up in December without that awful pressure to finish things in time for Christmas. Instead my plan had the opposite effect psychologically. I powered through additional Christmas projects like a sewing demon. Go figure. I do think the "there is no pressure" attitude worked though, because as I worked on these things I always had in mind that if they didn't get finished in time, well, those would be presents for 2019. Because of that I ENJOYED all the sewing and never felt any pressure. Life as it should be!
Little Red Rising Hood Cape
That red silk skirt that I made for Anna was crying out for a Little Red Riding Hood cape. I found a child's cape pattern in my stash and modified it.
I lined it with the red silk and made it reversible.
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She liked it!
She preferred the "fancier" silk brocade side.
Folkwear Sunset Wrap
Here's another time where I broke my own rule about not making things unless I know the recipient really wants it. In this case I just really wanted to make it! I have a complete, and I do mean complete, collection of Folkwear Patterns, which I began buying when they first came out in the 1970s. So when they came out with a new pattern for the Sunset Wrap I bought it and then really wanted to make it.
So I selected my ith a sleeve.
She claims to like it!
Rex Factor pillows
Emily and I are both big fans of the podcast Rex Factor, a very funny podcast about British history. I took a couple of phrases that have become running jokes and used my new Singer Futura embroidery machine to make covers for some thrift shop pillows.
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| One giant bolster and one neck roll |
The new Futura has a hoop twice as large as the largest hoop on my 2005 Futura.
In one hooping I created these (the maroon one is for me).
Aed was king of Scotland from 877 to 878 and the only thing the Chronicles of the Kings of Alba had to say about his reign was this:
Áed held the throne for one year. The shortness of his rule has bequeathed nothing memorable to history; but he was killed in the town of Nrurim
And yet the fellows at Rex Factor got a whole episode out of this.
The large bolster was embroidered in two hoopings, and the software helped me line up that text very nicely.
Viking Steampunk Aprons
What? Viking Steampunk Aprons? Is Viking Steampunk a "thing"? (Spoiler alert: NO. But it should be).
Stay tuned for the final thrilling installment of The Twelve+ Months of Christmas to discover what they are and how they were created.
These (and their construction on a vintage hand crank) are worth a blog post all to themselves.
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Whew! I NEVER do this much crafting for Christmas. At least I never have before and probably never will again.
I'm sticking with the idea of making something each month though. The Viking Steampunk aprons were finished up on January 2019, and because of both daughters work and travel plans in December, it was January before we all got together to exchange gifts.
Did you give or receive handmade gifts for Christmas or any other holiday last year?
